Secrets
by muhnemma
Summary: The secrets that Harry Potter characters keep from their loved ones and enemies.
1. Petunia Dursley

**One thing Petunia Dursley never told her husband. **

At the age of fifteen, Petunia Evans decided that she didn't need magic to be special. The school term was beginning to wind down, the days getting hotter, signalling the approach of the time of year Petunia dreaded and anticipated in equal measures: Lily's return from Hogwarts. For ten months of the year Petunia could pretend that her sister didn't exist, but for eight weeks in the summer Lily flitted back into their lives, reminding Petunia that she was very much second best. It was a strange couple of months: some small part of her eagerly counted down the days until her reunion with Lily even while she was sick with jealousy.

But this year would be different. Petunia could enjoy her time with Lily because she, for once, would be the centre of attention.

Petunia spent the day before Lily was due to return seeking out a hairdresser. It took her a long time because she was looking for a very particular kind of hairdresser, and neither she nor her friends usually visited such places. But she persisted, and after three hours of searching she found herself in a salon describing what she wanted. Her hair had always been her best feature. Pitch black and twice as thick as her wrist when it was plaited, her mother had spent hours stroking and brushing it when Petunia was a little girl. The hairdresser looked almost grieved to cut it so short, far above her shoulders, to bleach out the lustrous black and replace it with a shocking shade of pink.

She hid it beneath a thick woolly hat and ran straight to her room when she returned home. It wasn't that she didn't want her mother to see it; she wanted her to see it when the time was right. So she hid away in her room all night, claiming sickness. She ignored the gnawing in her stomach and the hours of boredom, willing to trade one night of discomfort for her long awaited victory. To pass the time she brushed her hair until it gleamed and she could no longer stand the scrape of the bristles against her scalp.

In the morning she had to force herself to walk calmly down the stairs. She entered the kitchen, her stomach churning with excitement and fear, and asked her mother if there was anything she could do to prepare for her sister's arrival. Her mother glanced at Petunia absently, her eyes lingering on her vibrant hair for the briefest of moments, and asked her to fetch the sheets to make up Lily's bed.


	2. Remus Lupin

**One thing Remus Lupin never told his wife. **

If there was one thing that tormented Remus more than his monthly changes, it was this: he missed his friends. The only people who ever made him feel normal were Lily and James. He had never doubted that Lily – compassionate, _good _Lily – had loved him and held him as a dear friend. And it was hard to feel like a monster when James, in all seriousness, referred to his lycanthropy as his 'furry little problem'. Even after Hogwarts they visited him every morning after a full moon, ready with a fortifying breakfast and a bottle of salve to soothe the wounds he had inflicted on himself the night before.

But it wasn't just Lily and James. Remus missed his living friends too. He didn't recognise the man who wore the mockery of Sirius's once handsome face. The Sirius in his memory was an arrogant young man, full of confidence and laughter. Remus had always envied him for seeming so sure of the world and his place in it. The Sirius that emerged from Azkaban always had a bitter edge to his laughter. He drank too much and never seemed able to add any weight to his almost painfully thin frame. Sometimes, when Remus spent the night at Grimmauld Place, he heard Sirius screaming in his sleep several rooms away, pleading with invisible tormentors not to shut him away again.

And Peter. It still seemed impossible to Remus that he could despise so completely someone he had once loved. He had been a cheerful, well meaning boy once. Although he had worshipped James and Sirius, he had shared a closer friendship with Remus. They were, after all, the outsiders, the misfits who couldn't quite believe that they had been taken up by two of the most popular, charismatic people in the school. Yet now Remus would gladly kill him, and he knew that Peter would murder him without a second thought.

After Sirius's murder, after Voldemort's second rise to power, Remus went into hiding with his wife. There were long periods when he had only his own thoughts for company, and during these melancholy times the urge to see his old friends became almost unbearable. He wanted to do what he had been denied the opportunity to do years ago: embrace them as his brothers and sister and say goodbye.

One rainy afternoon he climbed to the attic and dug out a photo album. There he found a picture of them all from their seventh year. Lily was being swept up into a bear hug by James while Sirius and Peter, both grinning widely, shot ever more inventive curses at each other. Remus sat beneath the shady branches of a tree, apart but included, and laughed, his open book ignored on his lap.

Remus folded the picture carefully and slid it into his pocket. Later, sitting at the table with Tonks, he wondered how he could put his request to his wife. _I want you to look like my friends. Please, just for a moment, just so I can say goodbye. I need this. _He opened his mouth and she looked up at him, smiling expectantly. In that moment he knew that Tonks, young and whole, wouldn't understand. He shut his mouth tightly on the plea that threatened to erupt and forced himself to smile back.


	3. Lily Evans

**One thing Lily Evans never told her best friend. **

By the end of her first year at Hogwarts, Lily knew she would love her best friend for the rest of her life. Severus was her guide to the magical world, always on hand to explain a word or concept she didn't understand. Although she became friends with other girls in Gryffindor, he remained her one true confidante. He was the one to comfort her when she cried because she was homesick or because Petunia refused to answer one of the many notes she sent. He was also the one to encourage her in her schoolwork, never bitter when she bested him in potions even though he prided himself on his prowess in the subject.

By the end of her third year, when the girls in her dormitory stayed awake long past midnight discussing prospective boyfriends, Lily privately wondered what it would be like to kiss Severus. She was disappointed not to feel the excitement that made the other girls talk in hushed, breathless voices. But she could not let the idea go entirely and so she kept it alive in the back of her mind, hoping that the small part of her that wanted to kiss Severus would grow.

By the end of her fourth year a wall was slowly being erected between them. She saw him talking to Mulciber or Malfoy and knew that their conversations revolved around _mudbloods _and _purebloods. _When she spoke to Severus that awful, forbidden word hung heavily in the air between them, unspoken but ever present. Lily began to talk to her Gryffindor friends about Severus, confided her fears that the pureblood fanatics were leading her best friend down a road that would lead only to heartbreak.

By the end of her fifth year their friendship was broken irreparably. Severus had flung the unforgivable word at her. She knew that it was done in a moment of rage and shame, but that didn't change the fact that he had marked her out as a far lesser person than him. He came to the portrait of the Fat Lady night after night, pleading for forgiveness. How could she explain what he had done to her? Whenever there was nothing to occupy her, her mind inexorably returned to the horrible thought that he had seen her as nothing more than a _mudblood _since the day they met. She questioned the sincerity of every one of his smiles and confidences of the past few years.

On the morning of her wedding there was no one Lily wanted by her side more than Severus. Her father had died a couple of years before and the only other person she could imagine giving her away was her former best friend. She knew that if she wrote to him and asked him to attend, even though it would kill him to see her marry James, he would grab at the opportunity. But he had broken something between them when he had called her a mudblood, and in doing so had broken her heart.


	4. Nymphadora Tonks

**One thing Nymphadora Tonks never told her cousin**

Tonks – then known as Dora – fell in love for the first time when she was four years old. The object of her affections was her cousin Sirius. He was the epitome of coolness; her hero. He wore his black hair to his shoulders and in school pictures he always smiled brilliantly at the camera, his tie crooked and his shirt untucked. Whenever he came to dinner at the Tonks household he always sat next to Dora, winking at her and vanishing her vegetables when her parents weren't watching. She trailed after him around the house, dolls neglected and stuffed into cupboards, and pleaded with him to show her some magic. He usually relented and, following her directions, enlarged chocolate bars or conjured balloons. One glorious afternoon, which remained her clearest image of childhood for the rest of her life, he allowed her to sit on his motorbike.

Five years after that day Dora was told that she wouldn't see Sirius again. She cried and pleaded with her parents to relent, believing that she had done something wrong and was being punished, but they told her that _Sirius _was the one who had been bad and the Minister of Magic had sent him away. During her years at Hogwarts, when Dora gradually turned into Tonks, she sought out the details of her cousin's crime and subsequent arrest. Although she no longer loved him as she once had (Hogwarts was _full _of interesting boys) the thought of the boy who had given her piggybacks committing an act of such utter evil made her cry for days after her discovery. She couldn't reconcile her memory of Sirius with the photographs of the insane murderer in _The Daily Prophet. _

Several years after leaving Hogwarts, when Dumbledore inducted her into the Order, she discovered that not only was Sirius innocent, but she could visit him whenever she wanted. She had gone to the first Order meeting at Grimmauld Place with her heart in her throat. Sirius struggled to her feet when she entered the kitchen.

"Dora!" he slurred, and stumbled over to where she stood to give her a hug. "You've grown."

"It's Tonks now," she said, returning the hug awkwardly.

Up close she could smell stale Firewhisky and see his bloodshot eyes. Over the weeks and months his unkempt appearance changed rarely, usually only when Harry was in the house. The moment his godson left for Hogwarts Sirius sank back into a depression, returning to drinking whatever alcohol he could lay his hands on. It made Tonks uncomfortable to see the hero of her childhood fallen so. Yet she continued to return to Grimmauld Place at least once a week. She drank with him and tried to make him laugh and allowed him to wrap his arms around her and sob into her shoulder. He had been her hero once; it was only fair that she return the favour.


End file.
